The Cold war and the Cuban missile crisis

Résumé du document

Understanding the Cold War, it is central to understand the history of the 2nd half of the 20th century. Between 1945 and 1991, there were lots of casualties in more than 100 wars that took place in the 3rd World in that period. Moreover, most of the crisis that threatened to escalate into a nuclear war occurred in the 3rd World. Far reaching and long lasting, the Cold War gave rise to a multitude of often conflicting interpretations, regarding responsibilities for its outbreak, its persistence and its final demise. Almost all of these interpretations were shaped by the on-going Cold War and many were profoundly political; the positions they argued were part of contemporary political as well as scholarly debates. The end of the Cold War and the limited opening archives in the former Soviet Union and its allies had not ended these debates. However, it is now possible to ask new questions about responsibilities in controversies about the persistence of the Cold War. David Painter focuses on the interactions on international systemic factors and national policies and politics, taking into account all events all over the world.

Extraits

[...] Moreover, the missiles on Cuba would have strengthened the Soviet strike capacity and cut down on the warning time. ( If the Soviets had been allowed to succeed in developing a nuclear base in Cuba, it might have encouraged to other acts of adventurism and a blundering to other an unintentional nuclear war. However, the consensus on the need to remove their missiles did not translate into a consensus on what to do. Before telling the world about the missiles, John F. [...]

[...] To understand the Cold War in all its dimensions, one may analyse 6 types of interactions: ( Changes in the global distribution of power. ( Advances in weapons technology. ( Shifts in the balances of social and political forces within and among nations. ( The evolution of the world economy. ( The transformation of the 3rd World. ( The interaction of the global distribution of power, intersecting with military technologies and strategies. The Cold War has been analysed as a product of the great powers' histories, and the structure and dynamics of international relations. The Soviet Union remained as an incomplete superpower. [...]

[...] If it means equality in missiles, it existed in the mid-1970. The measure of balance of forces as a whole or of counterforce capacity appeared by the late 1970's (cf. Richard Betts, Nuclear blackmail and nuclear balance). In assessing the nuclear balance, the soviets ha to take into account the arsenals of the other nuclear powers Fr, and the PRC), as well as that of the USA. The PRC (Popular Republic of China) broke with the USSR in the 1950's, and the link between the communist governments put enormous demands on the soviet military. [...]

[...] The USA had to be resolute to send the right message to Khrushchev and to get the missiles out of Cuba. Among other things, this would prevent the Soviets from using them as a bargaining strategy to make gains elsewhere such as in Berlin or regarding the American missiles deployment in Turkey. The Americans felt that if they gave way to blackmail, then the Soviets would be back again. The great danger with this was that eventually the USA will have to say no but then would have lost credibility. [...]

[...] This path or military action? In October 1968, Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange of the US guarantee on Cuban sovereignty. Many people came to see it as a model for successful crisis management. But not everything was under control as people might have wished. An American U-2 high altitude reconnaissance plane stranded perilously into the Soviet air space during the crisis, and one was shot down by Soviet and Cuban gunfire on Saturday 27 October. The USA miscalculated the size of the Soviet force on Cuba, and unknown to them if they had involved, they would have been confronted by Soviet troops equipped with battlefield atomic weapons. [...]